


Remember

by Jace_Diaz_Of_Hell



Series: the dreamlands [7]
Category: Star vs. The Forces Of Evil
Genre: Gen, hi i got bored and wanted to write and this was the result, im p sure amaranth's lowkey pining through it all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 09:25:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13544457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jace_Diaz_Of_Hell/pseuds/Jace_Diaz_Of_Hell
Summary: You deserve to know why I vanished.





	Remember

**Author's Note:**

  * For [InfernalPume](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InfernalPume/gifts).



_Note from the Author:_

 

Hey, nerd. If you're reading this I managed to sneak into the library without you noticing, which happens to be a good thing. I'd rather avoid the awkward explanation piece.

 

This book _is_ the awkward explanation piece, honestly.

 

You deserve to know why I vanished. I'm sorry for that, by the way, disappearing on you. It wasn't what I wanted to do. You're the first person I ever met. You, more than anyone, deserve to know the truth about me.

 

Especially because I'm likely going to be dead soon.

 

* * *

 

 

My name is Amaranth Isabelle Johnson.

 

I know _why_ Mom would have named me Amaranth- after a book she liked as a child, _The Amaranth Enchantment._

 

I don't know what Amaranth means, though. I've tried looking around, but I've only found descriptions of a type of grain and of a small purple flower which is supposedly poisonous. I'd rather have it mean the second one, I think. Flowers are pretty awesome, and if it's poisonous so much the better.

 

As for my last name, I kind of want to change it to Lucitor. My father may have created me, but that bastard has no say whatsoever in who I am.

 

I like to think I take after my succubus mother- we have really similar markings, and I have her eyes, only teal instead of blue. My hair is as curly as hers. But there are hints of my father too- my black hair, how my markings are green, the way my skin is a little paler than my mom's.

 

I don't know why I'm rambling. You already know how I look. There are more important things to discuss right now, and I don't have a lot of time to write all of this shit down.

 

The first thing you need to know about me is that I'm _not_ a ghost. I know we talked about it a lot, but I'm serious. I was never born, never existed. I don't exactly know what that makes me- a dream that became real? I don't like that description. That makes me sound like some sort of fairy tale.

 

If my life is any kind of fairy tale, it's from the Brothers Grimm- you know, those versions where the ugly stepsisters in Cinderella cut off pieces of their feet, or where Snow White forced the evil queen to dance in hot iron shoes till she died. The ones where the prince was blinded trying to find his way to Rapunzel.

 

The terrible fairy tales. The ones that always have blood and loss and only sometimes have happy endings. That's what my life is.

 

I've existed for maybe five years- my father, Luke, made me up the first time he caught a glimpse of my mother. He was thirteen at the time, and I think he's eighteen now. Or would be. I don't really understand time, or a lot of the waking world in general.

 

He never let me know he existed, so I just kind of wandered around for a while. I knew who my parents were. I knew things that they teach people in school- all the basic things a person should know, I guess. I learned other things from listening in on people's dreams. Don't ask me how I managed to do that- I didn't know a lot back then. All I knew was there were certain patches of my world that seemed thinner, where I could see right into other's minds.

 

I knew my father was a terrible person. I could see the way timelines split, the almost limitless bounds of his cruelty and his cold calculation. I can only hope I never inherited those traits from him. If I had, I'd throw myself into the Pit of Sleep and be done with life, because with that and the responsibilities I held I would have been a tyrant.

 

Around two years after I was created I stumbled across my home, nightmare castle. It's really a wonderful thing. When I lived there it was terrifying and beautiful and tragic, all at once.

 

I can't explain how it looked to you because it was always changing, fitting people's nightmares and filling out different perceptions of things.

 

The garden stays the same. It's full of flaming roses, broken sculptures, trees with no leaves. They look sort of like fingers scraping against the sky. It almost reminds me of the castle in Sleeping Beauty, with all of its thorns and danger. I like it a lot.

 

When I moved into the castle, it was just this... sponge. It absorbed nightmares, shifting to whatever it thought would be the most terrifying. Once I moved in, things started changing.

 

It started incorporating bits of my personality, things I had scraped together. There's a small library in one room, filled with fiction books. I like fiction better than history- it feels more real to me, seeing where I've lived all these years. In another room was a giant ballroom, with floating candles high above and a thin layer of ash on the floor. I used to dance in there when I was bored and alone, and I was alone all the time.

 

Things started changing. Dreams started becoming a little more real, dream figures becoming lifelike. Some of them fade away, some of them don't. None of them are quite as real as me, though. They're insubstantial. They talk, they do what you want, but they're only a shadow of someone's subconscious.

 

By the time my third year of existing had come around, a throne had formed itself in one of the larger rooms. Two thrones, actually, with a set of steps up to it. It was all very regal.

 

The day after I discovered the throne, one of the other dreams discovered a crown.

 

And there was a coronation.

 

I was no longer a dream-girl wandering aimlessly, but the Nightmare Queen. I had many responsibilities, jobs that were _crucial_ and always had a point.

 

If you've ever been out of that library of yours, I suppose you would have felt it. But you would have researched it then, and all the times I saw you you were never researching _this._

 

My father was a dream magic-inclined demon, one of the first in a long while. When he specialized and got ahold of his mastery, he went beyond just being a Dreamwalker.

 

He messed with... for lack of a better word, the fabric of dreamland. It's been fraying, unraveling into actual threads I can sort of see. Whatever used to happen so that the dreamlands would support themselves is gone.

 

I don't know the technicalities of it. I don't know what it would take to fix Dreamland. I couldn't find anything in that library of yours that would help me- that's why I actually appeared the first time.

 

Meeting you was a shock- someone who was _real_ , with real opinions and thoughts, even though you're a big loner. It was a _huge_ change from what I was used to- it was honestly like having ice water thrown in your face, that kind of a shock.

 

I forgot to ask for help, first because you made me so angry, and then because it was a lot simpler to argue with you than try and figure out the issue. I needed small bouts of normality.

 

Doing what I used to do- taking hold of the threads of Dreamland, weaving them through my fingers and giving people nightmares, helping people process things- that helped hold the dreamlands together. So for a while, I thought things might be okay.

 

I could go about with my jobs, my nightmares. My younger sister Stelangela (she likes to go by Lannie, and she's real, unlike me) would handle being the Queen of Dreams with her husband. I haven't met him yet, I just know about him.

 

And maybe things _would_ have been okay.

 

But then, like always, there was a crossroads. My mother turned sixteen and my aunt Estella vanished from her life, and a set of choices opened up.

 

My father and mother could meet, and he would kidnap her about six months or so after they fell in love, eventually leading to my existence in the real world. In that world though, my mother was like a shell of a person, and I was in a magically induced coma half the time.

 

Things might have gotten better eventually, I don't know. That timeline splits again further down the road, around the time my mother turns twenty-two. I would have been seven, I think. And it goes two ways- my mother escapes with me in the middle of the night. She goes home to her family, using spells to live in the castle as a servant until she's discovered. The other way it split was that my father tracked down my mother and killed her. One of my mom's siblings killed Luke, and I was an orphan.

 

Not really good plans, either way.

 

So I decided to go with timeline two: murder my father. Then my mother would be safe. She'd fall in love with a Pixtopian named Arrog; my sister Lannie would be born. They'd be a happy family.

 

And I'd still be alone.

 

It was worth it, to me, if it didn't mean that awful timeline where my mother was a walking corpse and I was always trapped.

 

So I chose timeline two. Over the next six months I gave a bunch of different people- my family, my mother's friends, my stepfather- all of them got nightmares about Jace. My mother got nightmares about my father, and my father got nightmares about destroying my mother. I'm fairly certain it saved her life at one point.

 

And still, no one knew there was someone orchestrating it all.

 

At least, that was what I had thought. My father had never discovered my castle- the only places he traveled in Dreamland were versions of his own home, my mother's bedroom. I think I felt him in your library at a few different points. You might know him- black hair pulled back in a ponytail, green eyes, sharp claws. He's not very distinctive as far as demons go.

 

On the inside, though? He's a monster. He'd kill anyone except my mother without a moment's hesitation, and he'd kill my mother if he got mad enough. That's why I had to see him dead.

 

One day- I think what the waking people call Valentine's Day- I managed to get everything to overlap in just the right ways.

 

My aunt went home; my mom's best friend stole her for a while and pissed off my father; my grandmother and grandfather found out about his abuse; my stepfather tried to keep Luke from being killed, only to accidentally break my father's neck and kill him himself.

 

I managed to travel to the waking world, only for a bit. Just long enough to see everything go down. And I don't think I'm ever going to forget the feel of the waking world. There's so much _noise_ ; it made me realize had I lived in the waking worlds, I would have needed the noise-canceling headphones my mother has for her sensory issues.

 

It makes me understand why you seem to like the quiet so much- that noise was overwhelming.

 

After my father died, I had planned on going back to business as usual- giving out nightmares, manipulating the threads of Dreamland, waiting for my sister, and ocassionally annoying you.

 

Unfortunately, things never seem to go according to plan.

 

I stopped in to talk to you first. I don't know why. I think maybe I just needed to talk to someone, even if I was being annoying.

 

Making sure my father died was something that needed to happen, but I felt a bit like a monster even so.

 

I told you my name and I left to go home, to start in with the endless chain of who needed nightmares, who could use a vaguely threatening dream, who needed a comatose like sleep, who needed to _remember_ their nightmares.

 

When I went back, the first thing I noticed was that my castle wasn't _my home_ anymore. No longer was it terrifying and tragic but beautiful. This new castle looks like a monster, hunching over a victim. It _bleeds_ disgust and horror. The castle's walls are broken and odd, appearing like arms digging into something, and my garden isn't mine anymore. Instead of what used to feel like history, it now feels like a graveyard.

 

My books were gone, and the ballroom's floors were broken open.

 

My father was waiting in the throne room.

 

Then I understood.

 

I had been dethroned. My father was the Nightmare King- or maybe he had always been, and this was all some terrible mockery, him playing me from behind the scenes.

 

He forced me to teach him everything I know about the way the threads of Dreamland work. But he's not doing the work he needs, and I can see this world of mine stretching thin.

 

I'm a prisoner now.

 

My prison isn't a dungeon or anything.

 

It's just a house, the kind of house a normal kid would grow up in. There are pictures of my parents on the walls, pictures of what would have happened as I grew up. Mom almost always has bruises just visible underneath her shirt or dress in them.

 

When I look in the mirror, I see the truth. I can see everything that happens through the mirror- the one relic of my true home I was allowed to keep.

 

I see a girl, with a cut on her face on one side and a bruise on the other. This girl has bags under her eyes, her hair is tangled, but more than anything, it's my eyes that haunt me.

 

I look dead already. Devoid of hope, full of sorrow.

 

My prison is somewhere between the Pit of Sleep and the actual Dreamlands. I can only slip out maybe long enough to get this book to you, or my father will notice.

 

I can't let him know what I'm planning quite yet, because if I let him know he'll kill me before and then my Mom's never going to get away from him, Lannie will never exist, and the Dreamlands as we know them will unravel completely.

 

I don't mind if I get killed after I succeed. If I succeed, Lannie will still be the Queen of Dreams, and someone else will step up as the Queen of Nightmares. My mom will be safe, and Dreamland will go on.

 

What I'm going to do is really simple. I'm going to pull my stepfather out of the pit of sleep. He had the idea to put himself under a Pixtopian sleeping spell in an attempt to pull Luke into the pit as well. It would have been brilliant, if only it had worked.

 

Once he's out of the pit of sleep I'm going to have to go through a long process to reach Stelangela in her current timeline- she likes to hop around, and right now she's about twenty years into the future.

 

Because Arrog (my stepfather) is technically one of the princes of Pixtopia, only a Pixtopian royal can wake him up. The empress has a grudge against him and against my mother, so I know she won't. But Stelangela, before she put herself in an enchanted sleep, was to be the next Archduchess of Hexelshire. She can wake him up.

 

He loves my mother. I know what he's going to do.

 

He's going to turn right around and try to figure out a way back in. If I can, I'll try and open a portal for him. I don't think I'll be there to do that, though.

 

There's no way my father isn't going to sense what I'm about to do. It'll take a horrendous amount of magic- first to pull Arrog out of the pit, then to summon Lannie, then the energy involved in breaking a sleep spell.

 

I'm not going to say that I think everything will turn out okay. In fact, I'm almost sure they won't. Not for me. Maybe they will for you. I can't get in touch with you, because my father doesn't know yet that I've met you and I want to keep it that way. I don't know what he'd do, and I don't care to find out.

 

He's going to kill me. I don't know how, I can't see this part of my own future. I just feel certain that there's no way I'm going to get out of this alive.

 

It's worth it, I think.

 

I'm telling you these things because you deserve to know, like I said. You're my friend. You matter to me, and I'm sorry if you've only thought of me as an annoyance.

 

I _need_ you to know these things, though, because I don't want to just disappear. I don't want to just have it be as though I had never existed. I don't want to die gently.

 

It's kind of comforting to think that this book will be in the library. Comforting to know my story's not going to vanish, even though you're the only one who's ever going to read this.

 

I'm going to try and follow through my plan to drag Arrog out of the Pit soon. It's going to take up a lot of magic, so I won't be able to slip out of the prison area for a long while.

 

It's very likely I won't get to talk to you again. And you'll probably never see me again.

 

So, I guess this is goodbye.

 

I know you have a lot of visitors, but I hope you'll remember me.

 

 

 


End file.
